


Trail

by bela013



Series: Fantine x Javert [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bela013/pseuds/bela013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decisions are made, and Javert is not as sure of them as he intended to be.</p><p>Follow up to 'Appreciation'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trail

This wasn't part of his duty as an Inspector, this wasn't even part of his duty as a man. All in all, this had nothing to do with him. And yet, here he was, in front of a shabby building, where his search for the Thénardiers lead him.

He could have asked Fantine of their whereabouts and saved himself some time. But this was done on an impulse, nobody knew he was here. Hence the civilian clothes that he downed, and the cap that he used to cover his face from time to time.

After the day he met Fantine, and tried to drag her to her own home, since she wouldn't stop following him around with her queer token of appreciation, he had once more, to keep her from endangering her life.

With a succession of body hacking coughs, Fantine could barely stand on her own two feet. And so, changing his course, he proceeds to drag her to the doctor he would use himself when receiving an injure when at work.

She began crying again, and clutching his coat when they arrived at the doctor's house. Mumbling her thank you and the string line of apologies and some very strong protests about her daughter's need of money, the short woman was ushered into a bed by the wife of the doctor and silenced with cough medicine, that knocked her out in an instant.

The doctor said it was a case of tuberculosis, and that she needed more than rest to be completely fine. Leaving them to seek his own rest, Javert walks to the corner of the town, where his house was, away from the center and the prying eyes of people. But rest, was something he did not do.

In an unexpected rush, he found himself searching for the hidden stashes of money he had in his house, and replacing his work clothes by the civilian clothes he used when he had to buy thinks for the house and didn't want to be recognized by the street vendors, who all had a mistrust, if not hate for him.

And now, leaning on a wall, he is sure that he looks nothing short of the idlers he would punish when in duty. It was not that he like to stand there on the cold, it was just that he had no idea in how to approach the Thénardiers. They would take one look at his face and scream bloody murder, accusing him from wanting to steal their children.

A crash by the side of the building draw his attention, and from the shadows, comes a dirty little girl, dragging a bucket behind her and grumbling under her breath. How the girl was not frozen yet, was beyond him, she had rags for clothes and he still wasn't sure that is she was wearing shoes or if her feet were just caked in mud.

But as she dumped the bucket's content in the street and made her way to the side entrance, Javert decided that if a little street rat could get in there, so could he. After all, he was cleaner than her, and judging by all the noise she was making, better mannered too.

Making his way inside the in, Javert lowers his head, partially to cover his face, and partially to look for any little girl that might be crawling about. Fantine said she was about seven now, but if she was to go by her mother's height, she sure was nothing but a wiry little girl.

Spotting two girls by the rails of the second floor, near the stairs, he wonders if any of them is Cosette. Not knowing who was who, he kept glancing at them, and making his way to the couple, who seamed to be scolding the dirty girl from outside, probably from throwing things at the front of the inn, where paying customers could see, and probably smell.

"Excu-" words cut short by the sound of flesh hitting flesh, when the woman slaps the girl across the face. Javert waits for the girl to stand up, with a fearful face, and go hide by door they came in. Clearing his throat, he suddenly have the full attention of the couple, the Thénardiers if the description he gather of them was right.

"We don't serve your kind here. Leave." not even allowing him to open his mouth, the Thénardiers just cast him aside, or better, outside. The woman points to the side door, and he complies, but only because he fears what he'll say to them if he actually managed to open his mouth this time.

Throwing one last glance at the girls upstairs, and grumbling, much like the dirty girl, this whole trip might have been over nothing. He had no possible way of knowing who Cosette was, and even if he did, the Thénardiers would never hand her over to him, since not only he didn't have a evidence that he knew the girl's mother, but he also had 'his kind' on his side.

"Don't worry, monsieur" startling him, the dirty girl appears by his side, the fear gone, replaced shared loathing to the Thénardiers, who treated them both like nothing. "There is an inn that take gypsy people at the other side of the bridge" resisting his urge to tell her that he knew of the place, since that was where he came from, he just stared ahead, at the now closed door.

"Say, girl, do you know of the girl named Cosette that lives here?" her face twists in suspicion, and her feet start to make away between them. Javert didn't have the force to be mad at the girl, a smart one at that, that even with half her face red and a bit swollen from a smack, wouldn't just trust the first importunate person to cross her path.

"Who's asking?" with a pout and a hard look, he couldn't help but to try and associate that face with something.

"No one. There is no need for you to bother your head with that" she still pouts at him, but after his back is turned to her, her face doesn't matter anymore. She was just a street rat, and looked like she would sooner stick a knife on him than tell him something.

Knowing that another visit there would lead to nothing but more slammed doors and a possible knife wound to his legs, since that girl looked far to angry to be dealt with, he begins his way back to the inn, to pay for the day, maybe some hot meal, for the time he stood in the cold, and he would be on his way back home in no time.

Ignorant to the small feat that trailed after him, he made half the way before his small shadow got impatient and decided that she wanted some answers. With a small stone in her hands, she makes an aim at the middle of his back, and is sure that it hit him, when he spun around with a hard look, probably ready to punish whoever did that.

There, a mere ten feet away, with another stone in her hands, and too far away from where he met her, stood the dirty girl from the in. What in hell's name did that girl hoped to accomplish by following him and trowing stones at his back? He wasn't the one that slapped her, he barely even spoke to her.

"Are you my father? Because I am the only Cosette there, and you are looking for me, and only my father would come for me, since my mother put me in there with the Thénardiers, and I knew my father would come to pick me up someday" she kept on talking, and after the brat accused him of being her father and proceeded to tell him about her life story, he knew without a shadow of doubt that only Fantine could have given birth to her.

Gone was his need to ever open his mouth again, since the girl seamed to have inherited her mother's gift of conducting a conversation without an interlocutor. And since she was making some very convincing points about the treatment she received from the Thénardiers, he just started walking to the inn once more, sure that she would follow.

And right he was, for she now walked right beside him, looking at his face, just like her mother did, only a few days ago. But when he noticed her small shivers, he takes off his own coat, and without pausing her endless yammering, he wraps it over her shoulders. For good measure, he picks up her small hand in his, only to make sure that she would follow him back to the inn, and to home, he tells himself. Only God knows what Fantine would do to him if she ever finds out that he had lost her daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> [With a small doodling to go with it.](http://communistmelisandre.tumblr.com/post/45229691953/trail)


End file.
